NEW INSIGHTS IN THE RELATION BETWEEN ELECTRON TRAP GENERATION AND THESTATISTICAL PROPERTIES OF OXIDE BREAKDOWN

In this paper it is demonstrated in a wide stress field range that bre akdown in thin oxide lavers occurs as soon as a critical density of ne utral electron traps in the oxide is reached, It is proven that this c orresponds to a critical hole fluence, since a unique relationship bet ween electron trap generation and hole fluence is found independent of stress field and oxide thickness. in this way literature models relat ing breakdown to hole fluence or to trap generation are linked, A new model for intrinsic breakdown, based on a percolation concept, is prop osed. It is shown that this model can explain the experimentally obser ved statistical features of the breakdown distribution, such as the in creasing spread of the Q(BD)-distribution for ultrathin oxides. An imp ortant consequence of this large spread is the strong area dependence of the Q(BD) for ultrathin oxides.